Hundreds of people marched through China's financial hub of Shanghai on Saturday protesting a planned extension of the city's magnetic levitation train, or "maglev", worried it would emit radiation and sicken them. Police initially detained dozens of people, bundling them into waiting cars, vans and buses, as protesters gathered in front of city hall shouting "We don't want the maglev" and carrying placards reading: "No to maglev -- bad for health." "We are afraid how the radiation will affect us. Why does the government not listen to our concerns?" said a protester surnamed Guan, adding the extension would pass within 100 meters (328 ft.) of her house. As police cordoned off the city government in People's Square, once home to a race track in Shanghai's colonial heyday, demonstrators took off down the fashionable Nanjing Road shopping area. The protest was the largest the cosmopolitan and wealthy city has seen since thousands took to the streets in sometimes violent anti-Japanese demonstrations in 2005. "I'm marching against the proposed line as it's too close to town. It's going to be noisy and emit pollution," said another protester, who would only give his family name, Liu. <...> "Yes, it's an illegal protest. But we've been pushed into a corner," said another protester. <...> China has the only commercial maglev in operation in the world, developed and built by the government and a German consortium including industrial giant Siemens. Launched in 2003, the maglev floats on a magnetic cushion over a distance of 30 kilometers (18.6 miles) between an outlying part of Shanghai's financial district in Pudong and the international airport. The government wants to extend the train to downtown Shanghai, and then possibly to the nearby tourist city of Hangzhou.
Police initially detained dozens of people, bundling them into waiting cars, vans and buses, as protesters gathered in front of city hall shouting "We don't want the maglev" and carrying placards reading: "No to maglev -- bad for health."
"We are afraid how the radiation will affect us. Why does the government not listen to our concerns?" said a protester surnamed Guan, adding the extension would pass within 100 meters (328 ft.) of her house.
As police cordoned off the city government in People's Square, once home to a race track in Shanghai's colonial heyday, demonstrators took off down the fashionable Nanjing Road shopping area.
The protest was the largest the cosmopolitan and wealthy city has seen since thousands took to the streets in sometimes violent anti-Japanese demonstrations in 2005.
"I'm marching against the proposed line as it's too close to town. It's going to be noisy and emit pollution," said another protester, who would only give his family name, Liu. <...>
"Yes, it's an illegal protest. But we've been pushed into a corner," said another protester.
<...>
China has the only commercial maglev in operation in the world, developed and built by the government and a German consortium including industrial giant Siemens.
Launched in 2003, the maglev floats on a magnetic cushion over a distance of 30 kilometers (18.6 miles) between an outlying part of Shanghai's financial district in Pudong and the international airport.
The government wants to extend the train to downtown Shanghai, and then possibly to the nearby tourist city of Hangzhou.
BECAUSE YOU LIVE IN A TOTALITARIAN STATE, YOU FUCKING ASSHOLE, AND THEY DON'T HAVE TO!!! SO WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU IDIOTS GOING TO ACTUALLY DOOOOOO ABOUT IT?!
Humans, I swear. Give me another species to work with. This is bullshit. In the end, might makes right. Nothing has changed since the caveman.
Why?
But Connecting Shanghai to a nearby city of 6.5 million people seems a good idea from any perspective.
I think the problem is that neither the media nor city officials provided residents living near the maglev line (up to 22.5 meters in some places) with clear information regarding the effects of radiation and noise pollution.
In fact, the amount of radiation emitted is apparently negligible and perfectly harmless, so that concern can be eliminated.
I believe noise will not be a problem either -- within the train and from about 200 meters away, it is very quiet indeed. (Having said that, the issue seems not as clear-cut .)
Nevertheless, these protests may have a silver lining, actually, three: people with a common cause organized themselves to express their displeasure with the government, and effectively enacted civil disobedience in doing so; furthermore, the government got a lesson in what happens when you try to railroad a more and more self-assertive citizenry into just going along with its plans without listening to their concerns and responding effectively enough; finally, when in all likelihood the radiation and noise pollution will turn out to be non-issues, people will realize that all the time, emotional energy, they took in their protests were based on unfounded fears.
Since the number of people arrested and/or injured in the protests were few, hopefully this will be a lesson well learned (and remembered) by all parties at relatively little cost. Truth unfolds in time through a communal process.
I agree with your other points - I wasn't really commenting on the substance of the post at all, just the terminology.
definitely, on all three counts.
but i think among Chinese, Hangzhou is seen first and foremost as a tourist city, given its country-wide fame for its scenery, history, temples, personages, legends, tea, silk, and so on. the first time i was told about it was from a Shanghai woman who called it the city for honeymoons.
still, you're right, more recently it has become a booming business and high-tech hub, with plenty of business traffic from overseas as well. and a 28-minute (!!!) maglev connection between Shanghai and Hangzhou would be simply fantastic, particularly for the surprising number of Hangzhou residents who commute every day to Shanghai, not to mention the far more numerous business people who travel between the two cities on a frequent if not every day basis. Truth unfolds in time through a communal process.
